The new Diego Cera Organ Builders III/34 installation at the Cathedral of St. Ignatius Loyola at Zikawei (Xujiahui) in Shanghai has now been completed. A dedication was held on Sunday, 24 September, with Philippine organist Alejandro Consolacion II playing the instrument for the service. This is the first installation of an organ in the cathedral in 98 years. The Project is waiting for photos of the organ and details of the event. An entry in the Census for this instrument will be made sometime in October, however we have updated the number of organs in the Census to 204.
At the same time, The Project has learned that the installation of the long-awaited Casavant organ for the Cathedral in Macau has been postponed yet again. The tentative date for start of the work now seems to be in 2024.
And while The Project does not really cover the area of organ repertory in China, The American Organist issue for September 2023 included an interesting article on four women composer/organists, now living in the US and Canada, of Chinese descent and their works (Calvert Johnson, “Organ Works by Women of Chinese Ancestry”, TAO, Vol. 57/9, pp. 48-59.) They are: Wang An-Ming (b. Shanghai, 1926), also known as Marion Wang Mak; Hope Lee (b. Taiwan, 1953); Vicky Chang Pei-lun (b. Taiwan, 1966); and Chelsea Chen (b. San Diego, CA, 1983).
Organs in the Census: 204
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